Back to Earth

The Kingdom is still thriving, yes, and it is looking really bright for another season indeed.

But a number of things have happened just recently that take a bit of the shiny veneer off the Super Bowl aura.

First, not a couple of hours ago it was reported that Bashaud Breeland has gotten into some serious trouble with the law. Major drug offenses are involved. I'm sure he's as good as gone. And it was just a month ago we signed him and were stoked that this shaky feature of our defense was at least a bit left positively intact. It isn't that the player as a human isn't infinitely more important, and I pray the best for Bashaud and hope whatever happens will make him a better person, and that his family is safe and healthy through all of it.

Second, the draft. It was a joy to indulge a bit with this stuff, even watching us select a running back in the first round which I'd said we shouldn't do. Apparently though this dude from LSU is supposed to be phenomenal, and when I look at the tape he reminds me of Le'Veon Bell. Wow, if he becomes that kind of back, then we'll put up 50 every game. Otherwise being Super Bowl Champions makes the draft a thorough joy because the idea is if we even do modestly well we'll have improved. It seems Brett and Andy did pretty decently with the picks we had, and we even got a couple of very speedy cornerbacks to counter the AFC West teams trying to pick up some speed for their own wide receivers. Bring it!

Third, and I wanted to save this for last: Dustin Colquitt was released. He had a big contract and it is hard to justify a punter taking up so much cap space, I understand. Just for the record I hate the cap, I hate it with a passion and always will, but Brett has managed it well. That also means letting go amazingly amazing players like Dustin Colquitt.

I remember the time when the Chiefs were generally miserable and I'd mention our best player was Dustin Colquitt. Please, this wasn't so much a knock against everyone else on the team, but a sincere shout out to our punter. Funny, with our offense so explosive, it is as if we really didn't need him much any more.

I looked something up online, however, after seeing posted on Twitter a highlight of him booming a 77-yarder against Denver -- hmm, I wonder where that particular punt ranks on the list of longest punts? Well there's the Jets Steve O'Neal's punt of 98 yards at the top. There are a couple other 90+ers, and a number of 80+ers.

Colquitt had six 70+ers. Six! I looked up other fine punters, like Andy Lee who had five, Johnny Hekker has had only two. As far as I could tell no one's had more than Dustin. Shane Lechler had three. Ray Guy had four, and he's the only pure punter in the NFL Hall of Fame.

I really think Colquitt should be there, for sure. He was one of the very best at getting punts downed inside the 20, I think I saw he was third on the all-time list.

Yeah, he is a future Hall-of-Famer. He truly deserves it.
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Chiefs as World Champions - Part X

I think its time to wrap this up. I have hundred or so more wonderfully wonderful wonderfully wonderful things to write here about the Chiefs, but I just can't get to it all. I may get to some of those items later plugged into some other posts, that's cool, but the draft is tomorrow and most Chiefs fans are slavering over their "draft crush."

Every year I really work to avoid looking at all the draft stuff simply because of, well, really, two words. "Percy Snow." I know you know what I mean.

But since I've been going off the sports celibacy wagon a bit more this off-season, for obvious reasons, I've noticed that it seems many think a couple LSU stalwarts may fall to No. 32, a linebacker and a running back. Some seem to feel we could get a good offensive lineman. There's apparently also been some crazy speculation that we'll trade up to get yet another speedy wide out.

What do I think? Honestly, I really think we should pretty much take every single one of our picks and get defense. I know it is unwise to rely too much on him, but Patrick Mahomes will still do a lot to make anybody on offense pretty good.

Running backs are particularly seductive draft crushes, but I really think there is great potential for Darwin Thompson and Darrel Williams, and Damien Williams was amazing for us last year.

Thing is, what is so so so so sooo cool about all this is that Brett Veach has got this, and we all know it. Not only are we Super Bowl Champions, but we have a genius front office decision-maker there.

Remember when we had Jack Steadman making all those decisions? Ugh. Yeah. I looked at a list somebody put online with the worst Chiefs drafts ever. Most of them were in the early 1970s. No wonder we sucked for so long after that. It is now as if all of our past poor front-office decision-making is being made up for now with Brett and Andy in there.

It is very much like our past instances of losing those big plays by an inch. Do you remember how often we'd need that one big play to go our way, and we lose it by an inch. It felt so hopeless -- I was convinced that those crazy plays needed to win big games would never go our way.

Wow. How much has last year made up for those. How many of them were there? A lot, and I'm sure I have a lot of them written down somewhere, just to point them out. Here're a couple.

In one of those playoff games, I think it was the Texans, may have been the Titans, Sammy Watkins made a clutch sideline catch we really needed, but it looked like he got only one foot in. Turns out on video review his other foot barely scrapped up a few grains of dirt before it went out.

First down Chiefs.

Then there was that interception made by Bashaud Breeland in the Super Bowl. His left foot went out of bounds right after he caught it. But, the video replay showed he barely still had that left foot down right when he made the catch.

It just seemed like we were blessed this year by dozens of those kinds of plays which before we didn't get in the worst ways at the worst possible times.

Somehow, yeah, whereas so many times before it seemed like we were under the worst curse ever -- now? It is just hard to believe that, finally, at least as fans of a very nice NFL team, we are as tremendously blessed as we are.

So yeah, tomorrow we get to do something we've never really been able to do.

We can enjoy the draft without the exasperation of wondering if this guy or that guy is going to make our team. Not just "make" the team, but you know: make the team. We can enjoy it without wondering if all the punditry sweet-talk about this guy or that guy is for-real or are they just yanking our chain so they'd get ratings.

When you're World Champions, life is good.
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Chiefs As World Champions - Part IX

One of the things I caught in looking over all the Chiefs accolades post-Super Bowl glory was some of the similarities between the 2019 team and the 1969 one. There were a few, some I noted, but a couple I wanted to mention here.

One was each team had one of those regular season games that was just wretched. Of course the last game our present Chiefs lost as of this writing was that one way back in November at Tennessee when we just fell apart after being up 29-20 late. I originally thought this was an undoing that would be our complete undoing, but when you look at that game it required a planetload of inane things to happen in such a short period of game time for us to lose it.

In 1969 we faced a young and surprisingly decent Cincinnati team, one we should have beaten handily, but didn't. We were just off our game that day, and coach Hank Stram told his team that. Just too many slip-ups, sometimes that happens. (I happened to learn about this in Michael MacCambridge's excellent new book The '69 Chiefs.)

We went on to win every single remaining game that year against every team not the Raiders.

The other quite interesting similarity related to what I noticed in watching some of the Chiefs games over the season on the Game Pass we get to enjoy for a while. Do you even remember how well LeSean McCoy played for us? He really ran the ball well, and I think most of us feel that he didn't play so much -- and not at all in the postseason -- not because as it was presumed Reid wanted to rest him for more use later, but because he wasn't going to tolerate a nasty fumble at a critical time. We seem to only remember McCoy's excruciatingly costly fumbles in the Colts and Texans losses. But dang -- he was actually pretty danged good the other times he was given the ball.

The similarity here is this one -- did you know the 1969 Chiefs had on the roster, for the entire season, Paul Lowe? What, you don't know who Paul Lowe is? Well, he was only one of the very best running backs in AFL history -- look it up. With the Chargers Lowe was phenomenal, even helping them to a AFL Title in 1963. His best season was 1965 when he ran for 1,000+ for the Bolts. The Chiefs didn't use him nearly as much as they used McCoy this year, but still. Just an interesting similarity.

The most recent Chiefs news is that Brett Veach went all in on our receiver core. I think that's awesome. I saw someone write we'll regret picking up Demarcus Robinson for another year, you know, because he's just the fourth best pass catcher we've got and there're gobs of wideouts we could've had in the draft or wherever.

Wrong. Robinson is a phenomenal receiver and having an experienced guy like this on the other end of Mahomes' tosses is hugely more beneficial than anything else. He knows the system and is often enough coming up with highlight reel plays. He's also a hard worker and a fine special teams player.

Even better is Veach restructured Sammy Watkins contract adding incentives and a rare no-trade clause.

Awesome. After all the talk about releasing him or trading him or something, just to please the salary cap gods -- well how about this.

It seems Brett also knew all too well about the harrowing ghastliness of The Chiefs Wide Receiver Project. There aren't five guys on that list that match up with Hill, Watkins, Hardman, Robinson, and Pringle. Yes yes yes I know there is Taylor and Burford and Marshall and Paige and Kennison and a few others, I got that, fine players all. But this one young receiver core we have in the stable? With Mahomes the master of ceremonies?

Are you even freekin' kidding me?

It's as if the entire wretchedness of The Chiefs Wide Receiver Project has been vomited up and rocketed into oblivion. Go ahead and put one of those values from 1 to 10 on these guys, our current guys. Hill is a 9, for sure. Watkins I'd give an 8. Hardman's already got a 4 or 5 and the sky's the limit for him. Even if Robinson's a 3 (remember these are how-good-you-are values -- if you have even a "1" that means you've been at least a little positively serviceable), that's a value that only 11 receivers in Chiefs history have surpassed.

Here's the main thrust of my No. 9 take. It has to do with one of the reasons these receivers are so crankin' great. It has something to do with an idea I've had for a while, a version of which I mentioned a few years ago after one of those insufferable losses to the Broncos back before 2015.

It is getting our quarterback to make deeper drops so he could move around more to get our guys untracked downfield.

It is that simple. In other words --

Mahomes uses deep drops with extraordinary skill.

A number of years ago I'd watch the Colts Peyton Manning drop 20 yards back after the snap, then fire it to a gliding Marvin Harrison or Reggie Wayne without a defender in sight.

Well guess what.

This is what Mahomes is doing now.

The other day I watched his game against the Raiders, the one when we toyed with them in a 40-9 trouncing. I just noted how much Mahomes was able to accomplish, dropping deep and moving around freely to let things open up downfield. I'm hoping they do more of it, by design -- hey, have plays where Mahomes is dropping 30 yards back if you must, get those receivers -- oh, and Travis Kelce -- damnn -- to just fly high everywhere, and then let our magician put on his show.

Thing is, right after I enjoyed this extravaganza, I watched an extended highlight clip of an NBA game when my favorite basketball team Golden State Warriors came back from 26 down in the 3rd quarter against the Boston Celtics.

It was as if they had the game won the whole time.

The thing that caught my eye was just the exceptional play of these two teams, the Warriors and the Chiefs. Yes, there is no question the two players most responsible for this embarrassment of riches for my two favorite non-baseball teams are the two players just about everyone has recognized have radically changed their respective games.

Stephen Curry and Patrick Mahomes.

With these two players on their teams, they've easily made these teams the most dominant forces in sports. You can see it, you just feel it when you watch them perform. Sure they need a supporting cast, that's why Brett Veach got those guys back. That's why we see the Warriors floundering this year with Curry's fellow splash brother Klay Thompson injured for the season.

Point is there is clearly something about the transcendent play of those two players you know makes the difference for the entire team. The funny thing is I just caught a piece on Curry that mentioned one of the things that makes him so great is, get this: his freedom to improvise.

Wow. How much Mahomes can do that when he gives himself that space to operate, just as I was talking about. It is also a testament to the sublime strength of these two players, that they can do that and play at the level they do.

So yeah, Chiefs fans. We've got the Steph Curry of the NFL on our team.

Or...

Do the Warriors have the Patrick Mahomes of the NBA on their team?

Way way way too much fun.
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The first two images are from Andrew Mather, the third is from Steve Sanders at the official Chiefs website. The image of Steph Curry is from Business Insider. Thank you.
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